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Topic: If Trump is strong on jobs, then why does he support unions and minimum wage? (Read 27663 times)

I understand he's based in New York, which is a Marxist hot-bed, but how does he really stand on unions and minimum wage? These are two issues that liberals and Marxists need to stay alive. If unions and minimum wage go, then our economy changes instantly, over night.

Where does Trump stand on these very important issues, and to what extent does he understand their effect in a free market?

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Trump has been consistent over time both in his opposition to the inheritance tax — he’s been calling for its repeal for a decade and a half — and in his support for private-sector unions. “Unions still have a place in American society,” he wrote in 2000. “In fact, with the globalization craze in full heat, unions are about the only political force reminding us to remember the American working family.” Trump singled out Teamsters President Jim Hoffa for particular praise: “His knees don’t jerk, and if anyone knows how to bring the Teamsters back to their rightful place at the table, Jim is that man.”

Trump’s uncharacteristic moderation about non-public labor unions reflects his occupational need, as a real estate developer operating in the Northeast, to get along with them. Bob McDevitt, president of UNITE HERE! Local 54 in Atlantic City, said “there has never been any kind of evidence of any kind of union animus with any of the entities he operated” there.

Given an opportunity earlier this month to revise his view of unions, Trump did not. “I have great relationships with unions,” he told Newsweek’s Matthew Cooper. Trump is himself a union member, collecting a $110,228 annual pension from the Screen Actors Guild, according to his financial disclosure. Cooper has written that the influx of white working-class voters into the GOP since 2000 makes Trump’s eclecticism not a weakness, but a strength, because Trump aligns with their opposition to trade deals and cutting Social Security and Medicare.

Trump is one of the few Republicans in the 2016 field who isn't skeptical of the usefulness of a federal minimum wage, but he doesn't think it should be increased from the current rate of $7.25 an hour.

Wages are a hot issue for many Americans. While the country has been adding jobs in the recovery, wages have barely moved. Trump argues that raising the minimum wage would make U.S. employees less competitive with foreign workers and thus make it harder to keep jobs in America.

In 2013, Trump floated the idea of two different minimum wages -- one for teenagers and one for adults with families.

Not raising the minimum wage doesn't mean he doesn't like it. Has he spoken about how destructive the minimum wage is to a free market? The unions are a cancer on our economy, but he has a great relationship with them. I have questions.